Actually I was never overly found of the local economics in a lot of games. Don't get me wrong I'm a huge Civ fan but it always bugged me that I couldn't setup bread belt cites to feed large capital or production center cities. This doesn't even make that much sense on the medieval scale as large cities were often supported by near by farming villages.

As technology improved the distance between resources and the cities that use them continued to grow because of faster transportation methods. But even in the ancient world when Wonders like the Great Pyramids were built they called in workers, resources, and etc. from all over their empire it wasn't just the resources of a single city used to make them.

In fact very few cities are truly self sufficient, even farming villages. The small farming villages often require supplies in the form of metal works and other equipment they can't make themselves. The larger an empire grows the more it has to have curtain areas specialize to truly grow large and become more productive.

Also I hear people talk about sieges and starving out a city. But the thing that it seems a lot of people often forget is that sieges are often a battle of endurance for BOTH sides. It's not just the city trying to wait out for weeks or months against the army sitting outside the gates. But also the army sitting outside the gates often doesn't have the same stockpile of resources the city does.

A lot of time sieges are lost because the army is starving so they have to leave. Yet games like this never seem to have to worry about the supply lines of the army. Yet this was a very critical thing throughout history as wars were won and lost by cutting off the supplies of an attacking army. Everyone talks about how they want to cut off the supply of the city they are sieging to starve it out. Where were is the defenders option to cut off the supply of the army that is parked deep in their territory? The more your do research on historical battles, both modern and medieval, the more you realize how critical a fact supply lines are especially for the attackers. After all the defender probably does not have only one army they probably have others and those could easily flank the attackers cutting off their supplies and was actually a commonly used tactic.

I think the game already has a good form of siege style economics that is more realistic then simply parking outside the games. The pioneers allow you to setup resource gathering spots around your empire which of course go to the global pool. But other players will be able to capture these locations and deprive you of them but also shipping the goods back to their own global pool. So your forced to choose between sitting hold up in your city or coming out to reclaim all the lost resources. This is typical as often times a raging army would sweep through the land gathering supplies of it's own by raiding and pillaging smaller villages, out laying farms, and etc. before moving on to try and siege the city. In some cases the raids were the only goal cause they knew they couldn't successful siege a place but at the same time the enemy didn't have the forces to meet them in open battle.

It doesn't seem like the ability to capture pioneer built resource locations in the current build [0.299] but I do recall the devs mentioning this was the style they were going for in one of their post.

Anyways, just thinking out loud...feel free to ignore my rambling.

Tormy: My explanation - When they're moving they can enjoy the fat of the land as they encounter it. When stationed in one spot you need extra rations once the local berries are picked clean.

Or something...just saying it's an option

This is why we need supply lines

Quit being melodramatic. The Devs have seen countless posts on the subject supporting either side. Don't act like everyone is against this when clearly that's not the case.

*sighs* Overall a trade system is a nice compromise between global and local..but no one here wants compromise even if its realistic and friendly to both those wanting simulation and those wanting easier management...Overall it seems to me the forum is just divided on the issue and the devs took the side they liked.

It's their choice...I don't like it but i do accept it...We'll just have to use mods to make it into a better game on our own accord.

If we REALLY hated the idea of a city-based localc storage economy we'd clean up the engine and rip that stuff out. Obviously we can understand the appeal (hell, it's what we originally wanted), but like most things that sound great on paper, it just felt too bloated when put into context.

This is just one of those issues that everyone will have to agree to disagree on

Personally I'm having trouble understanding my people are so upset, though I will admit I'm a bit of a late comer so not 100% sure on how exactly things were before. The devs said the local storage system is still there and can come into play for things like sieges. But overall it just frees the player up from having to worrying about making sure they ship X units of Iron to Y City which is training Knights. So all the micromanagement details are simply under the hood.

The only other possible issue is travel time so it takes say 3 turns for X units of Iron to reach Y City from the city that mined it. Though if someone is really concerned with travel times and local storages then perhaps the Settlers 7 is a game they'd enjoy. There you have all kinds of local resources which are automatically moved around for the players.

I'm not advocated the game become more like Settlers 7 as the travel time for resources can get annoying. You'd end up with shortages such as the bakery can't make bread because the flour from the mill hasn't arrived even though your global surplus of flour is really high. Which is fine because that game is almost entirely about managing your economy and supply routes. Combat, R&D, and etc are fairly dumbed down in S7. But even though the stuff is very much local the global totals are shown at the top just like in Elemental. Though unlike Elemental you have to keep an eye on supply routes and such to make sure goods are flowing correctly. I don't really see the addition of this type of mechanic to Elemental as being all that helpful, fun, or interesting.

Plus it doesn't really fit that well into the scope of Elemental which is suppose to be a 4X game not a trade management sim. It may seem easy and manageable on the small maps given in the beta. But remember the supposed largest map in Elemental will be over 5 times the size of Civ 4's Huge map. I can't imagine hassle of trying to managing the resources on a city level with a map the size of Civ 4's Huge map let alone one that's 5 times the size. You'd end up spending all your time looking at charts and trade route layouts every turn. Now some people like that kind of thing but again that's not the kind of game the devs are going for.

True, but also like most things it comes down to implementation. As the general idea maybe sound but it's execution is off, which is what happens a lot of times with improvements in game's sequals as things are refined. Keeping the system and hiding a lot of the mechanics behind the scenes I think is a good move.

Again I don't know what the pure local setup was like before so I can't quite comment on it. Even so I think having it so the player doesn't need to worry about making sure they move resource X to city Y is a good thing since it cuts down on teadous micromanagement which should be automatic. I mean if the player wants to build something that uses X then of course they are gonna want to ship X to that location there is no point in making them manually move it.

And there is no point in punishing them with travel times if they forgot to plan 10 turns in advance that they would build A, B, and C where C won't start for 12 turns and it's the item that needs X resource from a city that will take 10 turns to ship the goods from. That's just a headache and I think it's the right move not making the player have to worry over that. 

Thats just a direct insult presuming that some hypothetical player is so low on self control that he shall actually feel worried about such a planning task and also low on intellect so that would be hard for him. Simplifying game rules to adapt them to hypothetic duped taxpa... "purchasers" is a WRONG move. Also it is quite insane to be punished by in-game variable)) Those who wish to feel themselves a ruler without any intellectual burden shall prefer Overlording over even most simplified logistic system. Correct me if i am wrong, but this situation is possible in DF, one of the best econ games ever.

And do Elemental really plans to finally use RECTANGLES for a game field?? If for its logistic system the fact that diagonal movement is 1.41 times faster than hori/verti is inconsiderable then such a system could be almost harmlessly replaced with a pretty icons with meaningless numbers next to them... numbers may be skipped though.

This would be an interesting idea IF we could also take control of any local food based resources. Farms, Orchards, Wild Wheat etc..) found in the outlying areas of the City(s) under Siege, where those captured resources would be applied either "globally" or "locally" to help "offset" the "global X consumption value" of your Global Production, thus allowing Sieges to be undertaken and not be a total Empire Growth/Expansion killer.

I guess that would be a Balance issue for later on. Any value for "X consumption" while Sieging should/might have non-major/minimal impact on the rest of the Empire growth, which is currently more "Food" reliant, than it was prior to the Global Resource implementation.

In a nutshell. If I siege 3 Towns simultaneously, I will still have to have the Food resources available, to keep Empire growth a reality, otherwise sustaining multiple Sieges may be a determent as opposed to a positive the Empire as a whole...